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Mr. Sharky

Mr. Sharky

Last updated on: January 30, 2008 at 8:57 am by Fred Clark

Mr. Sharky 2008-01-30T08:57:10-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve successfully launched my personal, private-sector economic stimulus package: A 2008 Toyota Yaris. Like me, it is tall, skinny and frugal. A subcompact with head and legroom, who knew?

Between my unanticipated car-shopping and the two-days-and-counting teacher’s strike in my girlfriends’ kids’ district, time for sleep and/or blogging are a bit hard to come by this week. (Just curious — is there a rule somewhere that says students can’t join the picket line? It seems like a good educational opportunity. Plus a shot at major brownie points.) So anyway, here are some hastily assembled thoughts that might, if nothing else, keep the comment-count in the last LB thread from reaching four figures.

* * *

I do love Netflix, and I was excited to hear they’d be rolling out a “Watch it now on your computer” feature.

Except not so much, it turns out. The new feature only works on a PC running Windows. Windows Vista.

That strikes me as a very Blockbuster-ish thing to do. What’s next? Late fees?

No love for Mac users? Thanks for nothin’, Netflix.

* * *

Adam Weinstein has a nice rant in Mother Jones about how “As newspapers recruit ‘citizen journalists’ to fill their pages, flacks and hacks find an opening.” Stop the press releases!” He points to a pro-Wal-Mart piece of “citizen journalism” run by the Tallahassee Democrat which was authored by Stacey N. Getz, who works for a PR firm hired by Wal-Mart. That fact wasn’t disclosed to readers:

In the same month as Getz’s Wal-Mart post, the [Gannett-owned] Democrat published a story by a retirement home’s development director about the complex’s great new golf course — without disclosing her job — and a woman wrote an article about a boy who’d organized a cancer charity event without noting that she’s his mom.

The paper (my “the paper”) is also part of the nation’s largest chain, and we’ve run stories similar to those Weinstein describes. Forget the old rule against stories based on a single source, the chain is now eagerly posting and printing stories not just based on a single source, but written by that source.

See earlier: “Collaboration.”

* * *

I haven’t kept up with the entire comment thread for the most recent LB Friday post, but let me try to address one question. Yes, like most Christians, I do believe what Romans 3:10 and Psalm 14 say, “There is none righteous, no not one.”

I’m not an admirer of evangelism by formula, it strikes me as too much like a sales script to be an effective or genuine expression of love. And formulas for presenting the good news can be just as much of a trap as the stale tropes and narrative formulas that distort any other reporting of the news. So the “Romans Road” approach strikes me as a wrongheaded attempt to force round people through square holes.

Having said that, though, I do believe in what those passages from the Bible say. Romans 5:8, in particular, is a favorite of mine: “But God commended his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I consider that very good news indeed.

I appreciate that “There is none righteous” might not speak to your condition, as my Quaker friends might say. I’ve never understood that passage to mean that no one is better (or worse) than anyone else, but rather something more like no one is perfect, no one is 100-percent good. It’s worth noting that the most virtuous people, the sorts of folks we might point to as counter-examples of such a claim, seem to be unanimous in denying such an honor.

My main objection to the way these passages are employed in the “Romans Road,” one-size-fits-all evangelism tool has to do with Romans 6:23, which says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That neatly encapsulates one of the major themes in Paul’s epistles: the idea that sin becomes both employment and employer, both task and task-master. Odds are, though, if you’re listening to someone presenting the Romans Road, that’s not what they’ll tell you. They will tell you, contra-Paul in this very passage, that your sin makes you deserving of death and that it is God, not sin, who will pay you this deadly wage.

This is another example of where I think you’re likely to hear better theology in the church basement than you will upstairs. In those basement meetings, they’ll tell you that the disease wants you dead — not that the disease makes you deserving of death at the hands of your righteously indignant higher power.

* * *

So I’m playing with the iTunes playlists and I come up with the following, which probably doesn’t really work since it’s a gag based on an extremely unlikely Venn diagram, with A∩B for A=”intimate acquaintance with obscure evangelical band” and B=”appreciation for dirty jokes.”

Then again, what’s the point of having a blog if not to have a place to post such things? So …

Top Ten DA/Swirling Eddies Song Titles and/or Sexual Positions

Over Her Shoulder

Art Carney’s Dream

Divine Instant

Blowing Smoke

The Zoom Daddy

Sudden Heaven

The Glory Road

Angels Tuck You In

The Whistler

The Unsuccessful Dutch Missionary

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